


lucid dreaming

by Horsantula



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Blaseballidays exhibition match, Dallas Steaks (Blaseball Team), Danger Zone (Blaseball Team), Gen, Grand Siesta, Hall of Flame, Incineration, Peanuts - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28155996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horsantula/pseuds/Horsantula
Summary: Langley Wheeler, Steaks hitter incinerated in Season 3, has been languishing in the Hall of Flame for what seems like forever. But she might finally get the chance to play again, thanks to a former teammate.Based on the Blaseballidays exhibition match between the Danger Zone and the Tsushima Ghosts.
Relationships: Langley Wheeler & Sebastian Telephone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	lucid dreaming

Langley Wheeler has been in the Hall of Flame for so long, it’s starting to get old. The Hall is no match for her previous life. She’d been so accustomed to zooming around on her hoverboard that she never expected to one day have her feet touch the ground. But that was what happened. That stray ball had sealed her fate, and as she toppled off the board, arms flailing, the gout of flame that surrounded and devoured her saved her reputation in life. But not in death. Not only did she have to adjust to death, but also walking on her own two feet, and the strange locale that came with it. 

Langley had gotten used to it, but several seasons later, she’s getting tired of wandering along the endless corridors of cold black marble. The only light is that from the flickering blue torches mounted along the walls. It’s lonely, to be idling along with no one else in sight, but she keeps walking along in the hope that she finds someone else. Her life had been about motion, and so is her death. Langley had never been one to stay still if she could help it.

The Hall’s geometry is impossible to comprehend, and she doesn’t even try - there is no use trying to keep her bearings. A staircase visible at the end of the hallway could just as quickly become a dead end, or a fork in the path could appear in front of her eyes and she would have to choose one, never being one to turn back. Occasionally, Langley runs into another incinerated player. She can tell if they’ve just come to the Hall, their eyes wild, screaming, flames sputtering and dying on their uniform. Most of them settle down eventually, though, and Langley recognizes them the next time they pass by and asks them about the world they had just departed. Even later, when she encounters them again, they recognize each other and, even if they had been strangers in life, exchange a greeting, a little small talk (though there’s precious little to talk about) and then move on.

A long while after Langley’s arrival, peanuts start to fall from some vague area above and land in the wake of her steps. They’re edible, though bland, and a good distraction when wandering around gets boring, she decides. It isn’t the worst decision the Monitor has made, to afford the Hall’s residents a little snack. She glimpses some players shuffling along, cascades of peanuts crashing down and threatening to bury them, but she is thankful for the little tribute she receives. At least some people remember her still. 

So much time passes that Langley begins to recognize more and more players from their time in the league - particularly the ones who started in Season 1, now consigned to eternity roaming the Hall. Though she doesn’t want to admit it, each newly incinerated player she glimpses gives her a sinking feeling inside, evidence of the time that has passed. With every player replaced, a little bit of the league is ripped out and a new player forced into the splort. Eventually, would all memory that she had lived, played blaseball, be erased?

There’s one particular encounter that Langley will never forget. At some indeterminate time, walking alone along a hallway with her footsteps echoing in the emptiness, the air shifts imperceptibly and she isn’t alone anymore.

A young man appears in front of her, so suddenly she might have believed he had been there the whole time. But he coughs, blinks a few times, and puts a hand against the wall to steady himself.

“This place makes no sense. I was just walking up a staircase, and now-” His eyes, two of which are on the right side of his face, widen. “Wait. I recognize you. You’re...you’re…”

“Langley. Langley Wheeler,” she says. She studies him, wondering where she should know him from. Perhaps a player from an opposing team? 

“Oh! Yes, I remember you! You were always riding a unicycle, right?”

“Um, a hoverboard, but yes.” Langley frowns. She can’t quite place him. Then she looks closer at the numbered buttons on his face, and it clicks. “Wait. You must be Sebastian Telephone. Stevenson told me you got alternated.”

“Yes.” Sebastian’s face falls. “I must’ve remembered the alternate Langley. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Langley says quickly. “The Sebastian I remembered was incorporeal. So it’s good to, um, see you. How long have you been down here?”

“It’s been a while,” Sebastian says. “I came just before the peanuts started falling. I don’t know what they do, but hopefully something good.”

Langley studies the ground behind Sebastian. Already, the peanuts that have accumulated there are more than she has ever gotten. She tries to quash the jealousy that rears in the pit of her stomach. “Yeah. Hopefully.”

“Well, in the meantime, it beats sitting down on the cold floor.” Sebastian takes a step backward and plants himself in the mound of legumes. “Um, if you would like, I could tell you about how the team’s been doing? Or, was doing. I know information’s hard to get down here, so…”

Langley considers for a moment and then sits down across from him. It’s been so long since she took some time to rest, and that combined with the presence of another player almost makes tears spring to her eyes.

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” she manages. “Can you, um, tell me about that lemon that replaced me? How’re they doing?”

* * *

The Hall, cruel as it is, never lets its players have more than a fleeting moment of companionship. So after Langley and Sebastian part, she doesn’t see him again for a long, long time. 

All of a sudden, a sense of agitation seems to pervade the place, and for a long time the peanuts crunch more loudly underfoot, the torches’ flame flickers more intensely, wild whispers echo the length of the corridors. It all comes to a head on one fateful moment? hour? day? when Langley sees players run by to some sort of central gathering place. Almost with a purpose, though no one has a purpose in the Hall. Some stacks of peanuts that cover the floor and line the walls dissipate into blue vapor without warning, and most of the players that Langley saw earlier don’t come back. 

Except one.

He falls to the marble from some distance above, landing hard, with flames crackling and dancing across the surface of his bright blue uniform. They begin to sputter and die down as he sprawls prone, tears leaking out of his three eyes, and gasps for air that he doesn’t need anymore.

Langley runs over. “Sebastian? Are you okay? What’s happening?” She kneels on the floor next to him, batting away peanuts as they start to fall in his wake. 

He wipes his eyes and takes her hand and nods. “They should win, I think. Now that they have more peanuts, I think it’s enough.” He squeezes her hand even tighter, so hard it hurts, but she doesn’t let go. “But Langley - for just a moment, before it happened, I looked across the field and I saw her - _Jess -_ and she looked so _wrong._ I hope -” he pauses and takes a breath “-I hope it’s enough to save her.” 

Though Langley isn’t exactly too sure what he’s talking about, she tries to console Sebastian as best as she could, and pushes all of the steadily falling peanuts into a neat pile beside him. 

“It was enough, Sebastian. I’m sure.”

At that moment, a resounding _crunch_ reverberates through the Hall, a tremor so strong it knocks the piles of peanuts asunder, and it shifts Langley into a new hallway barren of any peanuts. She’s alone again, and the torches’ flame is flickering as steadily as it used to. She can almost see her reflection in the wall, and she tries to picture someone else in its place. If she were to be reunited with her teammates - what would they say to her? Would they still remember her at all?

* * *

Time trudges on in the Hall at its own peculiar pace, and at one point Langley is convinced the Monitor’s just dragging it out to make the players suffer even more. She keeps walking, for lack of anything better to do. The peanuts she receives have become fewer and fewer, and though things don’t _rot_ per se in the Hall, the piles of the old ones have begun to dry up and slowly crumble away.

She keeps running into players occasionally, though the chance gets rarer and rarer that they’ll know any more about the league than she does, having been there for so long. Eventually, even the most popular players stop receiving peanuts, though in some areas of the Hall, the marble floor is covered in a thick layer of peanut dust, stomped into powder by the players that traverse it.

One day she’s in the middle of her usual aimless wandering, kicking peanuts into the walls hard enough to produce an echo, when someone passing by whispers, “Psst! Langley?”

Langley turns around so fast her ponytail swings around and whacks her in the cheek. Brushing it away with her hand, she sees a familiar face: a teammate she knew for a season or two. Her Steaks uniform is more recent, sporting the marbled meat pattern adopted after Langley’s death.

“August,” Langley says. She vaguely remembers meeting her in the Hall before. “How have you been?” 

“I’ve been okay,” August says. “Just checkin’ back here again. How are you, Langley? Anythin’ I can tell you about?”

Belatedly, Langley remembers that August’s deal - something to do with Forest Gods and the like - lets her have some access to the world above. She wonders what kind of deal anyone would offer her - with her luck, her consciousness would be implanted into a hoverboard or something. 

“I’m alright,” Langley says. “What’s happening up there? Is there anything important going on?”

August shakes her head. “Right now it’s the Grand Siesta. After the death of the Shelled One, the players get to rest for a while. No tellin’ when it’ll end.”

“Hmm. That explains why it’s been so quiet lately.” Langley’s heard of Siestas but never one this long. It must be nice, she thinks. To live a normal life for a bit, hang out with your teammates and family without fear of incineration. 

With a shock, Langley suddenly can’t remember if she ever had a family or not. She wracks her mind for any memory of one before or during Blaseball, but all she can find is a blank void where it should be. The already-cold Hall seems to drop several degrees, and before she can thank August, the hallway shifts and transports her to loneliness again.

* * *

More time passes. More time passes. Langley feels vaguely unhinged. She takes to drawing little pictures with her finger in the peanut dust, hoping that some other player will find them and remember that they aren’t alone. She writes so many Hi’s and Hello’s that her fingers start doing it unconsciously, on her thumb or the side of her uniform pants as she keeps walking, walking, walking. Eventually she starts more artistic endeavors, drawing a Texas-shaped steak and then the faces of her teammates that she can remember. 

She’s kneeling on the ground with peanut dust accumulating on her uniform pants, trying to see if she can construct a pyramid out of them, when the most interesting thing that’s happened to her so far happens. Another soundless disturbance in the air next to her, and Sebastian Telephone falls once more. Except unlike last time it isn’t as abrupt, more like a slow gliding to the ground. And the flames that flicker over his uniform - bright orange this time - aren’t as intense, moving strangely like they’re animated instead of real.

He’s crying again, his bottom eye blinking as the tears from the upper one run into it, but also smiling for some reason, and he puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Langley-” he says, but she cuts him off.

“Seb, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine! Look, Langley, this is your chance, okay? Go on, good luck!” 

“I-what-” but before she can continue speaking, the last thing she sees is his encouraging nod, and a sensation of _rising_ comes over her, and the Hall fades away to be replaced by a blaseball diamond with a game in full swing.

Langley is first aware of the hoverboard once again under her feet, and the surprise and delight almost makes her lose her balance again. She recovers it, though, and then it takes her another moment to adjust to the ruckus from the stands, the simultaneous cheering and screaming. She’s in some unnamed stadium with no identifying banners, and the floodlights above the diamond are so bright she can’t see much past the edge of it. When she looks up to the sky, she sees a solar eclipse glowing ominously above.

She goes to sit in the dugout, and for a little while, she concentrates on her breathing, eyes fixed on the dirt as they acclimate to the light. But even though it’s been a long time, blaseball is still second nature to her, and when the inning ends, she takes what was Sebastian’s spot in the infield, gliding out on the board and taking a few experimental turns.

Finally, Langley’s eyes can make out past the brightness of the lights the scoreboard above them, which shows that it is the top of the seventh inning and her team, the Danger Zone, is up four to one against the Tsushima Ghosts. _I don’t remember those ILB teams_ , she thinks. But she concludes this isn’t an regular game - ILB games didn’t feel like this one does, a little fuzzy around the edges and somewhat intangible like a mirage.

She looks down and sees her old Steaks uniform has been replaced with the same bright orange one Sebastian was wearing, with a large triangular warning sign on the front. Through the next few innings she tries to make out the faces of her teammates and the other team to see if she can recognize any of them. Some she dimly remembers as opponents. But she doesn’t see another Steak until the bottom of the 8th inning, when Jessica Telephone steps up to bat. 

The Tsushima Ghosts have two outs already, but this doesn’t seem to faze her. Wielding the Dial Tone, which she hadn’t had as Langley’s teammate, she readies her stance with practiced ease. Her hair, which had been brown when Langley knew her, is now blonde and reaches farther down the back of her lavender Ghosts uniform than it did before. Her eyes are just a little bit sadder, and Langley watches them fix the ball with steely focus as Forrest Best lets it fly at her. 

A _crack_ resounds across the diamond as Jessica swings and makes contact. The ball goes low, bouncing along the ground towards Langley, who takes the opportunity. She glides towards it, hoverboard pivoting smoothly, and scoops it up with her glove. As Jessica sprints to first base, Langley throws the ball, and it hurtles through the air and comes to a stop in the glove of her teammate at first base, before Jessica can reach it. She skids to a stop and shakes her head, and then her eyes follow the arc of the ball to meet Langley’s.

“Good one, Langley,” Sebastian’s sister mouths, and Langley feels a smile blossom across her face. For a moment, she stops worrying about exactly what this is, a dream or a hallucination or something else, and coasts over to the dugout as the second half of the inning starts. 

“Hey, nice job, Langley!” someone says to her as she goes to sit down, and her teammates chime in. Someone claps her on the back, and she can’t keep from beaming. She wants to savor every minute of this, for she knows, the way a lucid dreamer does, that soon it’ll be nothing more than a distant memory. 

So when it’s her turn at bat, she rolls slowly up to home plate, gripping the bat tightly in her hands, and closes her eyes just for a moment. The floodlights burn red through her eyelids and the noise of the stadium washes over her. Then she faces the pitcher in front of her, takes a deep breath, and prepares to swing.

* * *

...In the locker room of the George Foreman Stadium, the abandoned hoverboard in the bottom of Kline Greenlemon’s locker tentatively whirs to life, its wheels spinning and the lights blinking on. Though there’s no one around to observe it, it falls to the floor and circles around the room, lights flickering on and off randomly, under the control of a phantom player.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my third consecutive fic about an obscure Steaks player! I was seized by a bolt of inspiration when the Steakhouse started discussing Langley and had to get this down.
> 
> If you can spare 'em, Langley (and Seb) would probably not complain if you dropped them some peanuts.
> 
> We Are All Love Blaseball!


End file.
